Power of Caring
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The Great One heeded a different drum

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Posted: Sunday April 18, 1999 01:50 PM

Sports Illustrated NHL writer Michael Farber spoke with CNNSI's Nick Charles about Wayne Gretzky's retirement and Gretzky's impact on the National Hockey League and the sport of hockey:

Nick Charles: Michael, athletes are usually the last to know what time's the right time to go. Do you agree that this was the best time for Wayne Gretzky to retire?

Michael Farber: Well, clearly Wayne thinks it is. I think from the National Hockey League's point of view, there is never a good time for Wayne Gretzky to go. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure to stay, however; his wife, Janet, wanted another year, his agent, Mike Barnett, wanted another year, and the Rangers did as well, but Gretzky's been very, very firm all this week.

Charles: He said that there was no one flash moment when it struck him that he needed to retire, but that he began to feel the fatigue a 38-year-old feels. How had his game slipped?

Farber: Just the other week, Luke Richardson, a defenseman for the Philadelphia Flyers, nailed him along the boards. Now Gretzky in his prime would never be nailed by a defenseman as slow as Luke Richardson. This will be the first year Gretzky hasn't averaged a point a game in his career. By other people's standards, it's been a good year; by Wayne Gretzky's own standards, it hasn't and I think when Wayne Gretzky saw he couldn't play the way he used to anymore, he decided enough was enough.

Charles: A lot of people may not realize this, Michael, but criticism fueled Wayne Gretzky throughout his career ...

Gretzky changed the game of hockey like no other. David E. Klutho

Farber: He was just like Michael Jordan in that way, Nick. You look at Jordan -- he would take the smallest insult from Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, build it into something terrific and then go out and torch New York for 50. Wayne Gretzky had very little criticism in his career, but what he did have, he used in a positive way. You can go back to 1993, Game 7 of the conference finals against Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens. During that series Bob MacKenzie, a very well-respected hockey writer in Canada, had written that Wayne Gretzky was skating as if he had a piano on his back. After a magnificent Game 7, Wayne Gretzky was crowing, "How's the Piano Man sound now?" Gretzky knew how to take something negative and turn it into a positive.

Charles: In measuring greatness, one element is key -- how did Wayne Gretzky change the game of hockey?

Farber: Well, he changed the business of hockey, of course, after his trade to Los Angeles. We wouldn't have expansion franchises all over the map if Gretzky hadn't gone to California. But on the ice, like so many great ones, he changed his sport. He was like Lewis and Clark -- he was an explorer. He opened up the area behind the net, which had basically been dead space ever since hockey was invented. This was Wayne Gretzky's office. He also became a penalty killer. Before Gretzky, all the penalty killers were third-line defensive players. Wayne Gretzky, along with Jari Kurri back in Edmonton, became an offensive force on a penalty kill. He also helped rewrite the rule book. Because Gretzky and the Oilers were so strong 4-on-4, the league decided it couldn't have this situation, and, when there were concurrent minor penalties, it remained 5-on-5. The league had to adjust to Wayne Gretzky.

Charles: And now they'll have to adjust to his absence.